Margaret Mahy was approached in the mid 1990s by South Pacific Pictures about creating a children's TV series, but it was until the popularity explosion that fantasy experienced after Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter that the project really began to be worked upon.

The scriptwriters, Rachel Lang and Gavin Strawhan, worked with Margaret Mahy to produce the story of Maddigan's Quest. The ideas, characters, locations and plot were then turned into scripts, by Rachel and Gavin, and into a novel by Margaret Mahy.

The book was published in 2005 under the title of "Maddigan's Fantasia" while filming was already under way on the series "Maddigan's Quest". The two are obviously very similar, having the same starting point, but are not identical. For example, the actress who plays Garland, Rose McIver, is blonde - but in the book, Garland is a redhead.

Before the series began to screen in 2006, the book was republished in New Zealand under the same title of "Maddigan's Quest". It should be published in the UK in Autumn 2006.